


Seventh Year Suite in Six Movements

by nnozomi



Series: orchestra'verse [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Classical Music, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 19:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18666490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nnozomi/pseuds/nnozomi
Summary: This would be a happy ending for everyone, if it were an ending.





	Seventh Year Suite in Six Movements

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted something long and plotty to finish this series with, but a plot never happened; to give me and the characters a bit of closure, I decided to go ahead and post some vignettes from here and there. Mostly just fluff and music.

Seventh Year Suite: A piacere poi a tempo

 

I. Paradiddles and other rudiments 


BOOM!

Harry almost dropped the mallet, which might not have gone well. He felt as if his hair was standing on end.

Ron was grinning, arms folded across his chest. “You think _that’s_ loud? Wait until you try the bass drum.”

“…This isn’t a bass drum?”

“That’s a kettledrum. Timpani. Three of them, all tuned to different notes, see?”

Harry tapped the three drums, far more cautiously this time, in turn. “They sort of…all sound the same to me?”

“That’s what _they_ all say.” Ron gestured cheerfully at the empty chairs which would later be occupied by the rest of the orchestra. “Too deep to hear. Tosh. You just have to get used to it. What else do you want to try?”

“What else have you got?” Harry shot back, and watched Ron blush so hard that his freckles momentarily disappeared. “Like, what’s this?” he gabbled, snatching up the nearest mysterious instrument.

“Oh. Um. That’s a triangle. That’s easy. Here—“ Ron took it away from him, just managing to avoid a brush of fingers, and skilfully dislodged the slim metal rod from the triangle itself. “Hold it up like this and strike it like this. No, not _by_ the triangle, how’s it supposed to resonate, by the dangle up here, see?”

Harry did as he was told, and was rather charmed by the high-pitched tingle that resulted. Encouraged, Ron moved on to introduce him to the snare drum and the cymbals.

Outside it was hailing so hard that the hailstones striking the castle windows sounded like small explosions, and no more light came in at three in the afternoon than would have done at three in the morning. Professor McGonagall, grim-faced, had declared that afternoon’s Gryffindor-Ravenclaw Quidditch match postponed a week. Harry could, honestly, see her point—he didn’t especially fancy being brained by hailstones while dodging Bludgers, or having his Chasers aiming their Quaffles at the Keeper instead of the hoop because they couldn’t see the latter—but it had still meant a dreary afternoon when he had expected an exciting one.

He’d thought of trying to get together a strategy session indoors, but Sloper and Miles had both seized the chance to study for NEWTS—“just because you’ve practically got your pro Quidditch contract signed already, Potter, doesn’t mean the rest of us can get by without exams”--Adair had taken the example of his elders and settled down to his OWL textbooks, Weasley and Sobel had roped some of the third- and fourth-years into an all-girl Exploding Snap tournament, and little Partridge had ended up with someone’s vast Kneazle asleep on his knees, looking as if he wouldn’t dare to move even if he wanted to. Harry was left at loose ends.

So when he’d seen Ron Weasley stand up and stretch lankily, then tug his sister’s ponytail in passing (“Ron, you git!” Ginny yelped as her hand of cards exploded showily) and make for the door, Harry had for one reason or another tagged after him.

“Hey, Weasley—“ in the hallway. “Where you off to?”

Ron blinked at him. “Practice. What’s it to you?” His tone was kinder than the words; the unfocused antipathy they had begun Hogwarts with had largely been defused by seventh-year camaraderie, and Ron had been visibly pleased when Harry chose his sister as a Chaser this year, replacing one of her male classmates whose performance the year before had been nothing much.

“Um. Nothing. Maybe I could come listen?”

Ron’s sandy eyebrows went up. “To me bangin’ on the drums?”

“…I guess? I haven’t got anything better to do, I mean…”

“Nah…sure, if you want? Don’t go blaming me if you get bored, though.”

And so here they were in the big deserted orchestra rehearsal room, trying out the various percussion instruments and listening to the thrum of the hail. There were faint sounds of other instruments being played from the small practice rooms nearby, but no one else was in the big one. Harry couldn’t remember the last time he and Ron Weasley had been alone together, for all they shared a dorm room; Thomas and the others were always there one way and another.

Setting down the big clash cymbals carefullly—Harry could still feel the air vibrating after the dramatic noise they made—Ron scratched his head and looked sheepish. “I, um, kind of had ought to do some actual practice? I told you, you’ll be bored…”

“I don’t care. I might have a nap, though.”

Ron grinned. “Good luck.”

At a measured distance from the drums, Harry chose three of the chairs set out for rehearsal (it was as well for interhouse amity that neither he, then, nor Draco Malfoy, later, knew that two of the chairs so honored belonged to the oboe section) and sprawled lengthwise over them, turning comfortably on his side and shutting his eyes.

Ron cleared his throat awkwardly a few times, shuffling sheet music, then muttered a metronome spell and began to practice in earnest. Harry dozed comfortably to the accompaniment of the measured thumps, booms, and rattles, half-registering Ron swearing under his breath when he made a mistake or humming the melody line in a pleasant baritone.

Ron woke him when he’d finished practicing, suggesting they go back down to Gryffindor as it was almost time for dinner; Harry wasn’t sure whether he’d really felt Ron stroke his hair once, or dreamed it. He was extremely conscious of the way their shoulders and the backs of their hands seemed to collide here and there as they clattered down the narrow staircase.

 

II. Stabat mater (non) dolorosa (duet for soprano and alto) 


Hermione had told her parents about her boyfriend after the concert at the Ministry in sixth year. After discovering that their daughter was a witch, they had become pretty much unshockable by anything she could come up with; she’d had the sex talk on general lines years before, but her mother gave her most of it again, just in case, and her father reminded her clumsily, several times, never to stay with him unless he treated her right.

When they met him—briefly, on the platform at King’s Cross, when the Christmas holidays started in seventh year—Olivia Granger was wryly amused that her Nene had found the whitest white boy there ever was to go out with. Hermione was disconcerted to realize that she hadn’t been thinking of “white boy, biracial girl” but rather of “pureblood boy, Muggleborn girl.” Did I already decide which world to settle in? she wondered, swallowed hard, and went back to the UCAS documents her parents had left on her desk at home. At her careers counseling session, Professor McGonagall had told her to write to Percy Weasley at the Ministry, and her owl had returned promptly, heavy laden with all kinds of information about ways and means of A-level equivalence for Hogwarts leavers.

Draco wouldn’t have told his father about Hermione for a million Galleons, but he did show his mother her picture. Narcissa’s reactions had included a) she’s making you happy, darling, that’s wonderful, and b) what I wouldn’t do to get my wand on her hair and give her a little style.

Draco chose not to pass on this comment to Hermione, which was wiser than he knew; the Malfoy family was not well informed about the politics of black women’s hair. Hermione had agonized for days about straightening her hair for the Ball fourth year; she still wasn’t sure she had made the right decision. In fact Narcissa was longing not to straighten Hermione’s hair in particular but to do something, anything, with it other than a large bushy ponytail—she would have been highly intrigued by box braids, beads, or even an elegantly shaped short natural cut, if provided with the relevant background—but it was as well not to begin with that conversation.

What Narcissa did choose to do was to pass on an invitation through her son to his girlfriend’s mother for tea on the Alley, at a recently opened tea shop she’d become very fond of, Madeleine’s. Sitting one table away from the window, she saw Miss Granger herself escort her mother down the street, say something earnest and inaudible, and turn in the direction of Flourish and Blotts while Mrs. Granger opened the door, with its silver chime, and came in.

Narcissa held her hand out to shake; a polite gesture between two powerful witches or wizards, it meant “I am not holding my wand on you.” She remembered too late that Muggles didn’t have wands, but the other lady grasped her hand with no hesitation. Her skin was slightly warmer than Narcissa’s. It was hard to tell her age; she might have been in her late forties, several years older than Narcissa herself, but she looked well on it, aging almost like a witch. She was dressed with what would have been extremely modern taste for a witch that age: white slacks and a pale green jacket and top, curving generously around her curvy form, with jade-and-silver earrings and a silver choker. Very Slytherin, Narcissa approved.

As for the hair, which she had been suppressing extreme inward curiosity about: there was just as much of it as the daughter had, but it all seemed to know where it was going, with two fine braids running back through it from the temples, caught in a silver clasp at the crown of her head and somehow keeping it all in check. All right, Draco might have caught the child at an awkward stage but clearly she was going to improve with age.

“Mrs. Malfoy?” the other lady said, a brisk London Muggle accent with just a hint of a lilt at the back of it. “I’m Olivia Granger. It was so kind of you to invite me.”

“Narcissa Malfoy. Do sit down, Mrs. Granger. I’ve ordered us a tea. I hope you don’t mind.”

They settled into their chairs. “As long as none of it is moving,” Olivia said pleasantly. “I don’t know if you’ve seen those chocolate frogs my daughter used to bring home in her first year…?”

“Dear me, no, those are for children, you needn’t worry.” Narcissa smiled. “I think you’ll enjoy the fare.”

To her pleasure, Olivia seemed to relish the special Madeleine’s cream tea, with its plate of delicate scones no bigger than a Galleon around, and jewel-bright selection of jams. They drank Lady Greyhall tea and talked of their children, because really, what else did they have in common? It had never occurred to Narcissa before how hard it would be for Muggle parents to control a young child’s accidental magic; she felt for them rather. On the other hand, she found herself sighing at Olivia’s account of the office of dentistry she and her husband shared; it wasn’t that married wizarding couples never worked together, of course, if anything most did, but not people of _our_ class, Narcissa reminded herself.

It was when nearly all the scones were gone, and the teapot had been refilled, that Olivia seemed metaphorically to square her shoulders and face Narcissa head on. “Mrs. Malfoy, I’m sure you won’t mind my bringing up a delicate subject. My daughter tells me that a few times in her time at school she’s been called some pretty nasty things because her father and I aren’t magical people. Including, I have to say, by your son. In the past, she assured us. Still.”

“Nasty things? Such as?” Narcissa honestly didn’t understand.

“I think the word was ‘Mudblood’?”

Narcissa winced. “I _am_ sorry. I didn’t raise Draco that way, I hope you know. I’ve tried to teach him to be understanding of those with fewer blessings in life than he’s had.”

Olivia was watching her carefully. “You know, Mrs. Malfoy, I’ve gotten funny looks, and sometimes worse, most of my adult life—because I’m a black woman married to a white man.”

It took Narcissa a moment to understand this, because she heard _I’m a Black woman_ first and had to recalibrate; there was no chance that they shared a maiden name. “I believe that’s quite a matter of concern among Muggles…?” she offered tentatively.

Olivia gave her an incredulous look, and laughed a little. “Quite a matter of concern. Yes, you might put it that way. The first time she heard it, my Hermione thought he meant she was mixed-race. Nothing to do with magic or not. All about her skin color, and mine.”

“Oh no. Oh, not at all.”

“Yes, well, she talked to an older girl with family from Jamaica, Angelina something, who set her straight. It was a bit of a shock for her, finding out she’s likely to be called names in both worlds.”

Narcissa sighed. “I’m sorry my Draco behaved that way, Mrs. Granger. His father and I have views about our world, and you and your daughter may not share them, but I didn’t teach him to be cruel.”

Olivia Granger’s gaze softened very slightly. “My Hermione is no fool, Mrs. Malfoy, not to be taken in by a pretty face. _We_ didn’t raise _her_ to give herself to someone who would look down on her or call her names. I just hope they can be good for each other.”

“If your Hermione can be good for him,” Narcissa vowed, “I’ll ensure to see that he is never less than that for her.”

 

III. Waltz at the Village Inn

The spring concert was to be Liszt—the Mephisto Waltz, one of the finest short works by a wizarding composer—as well as the Brahms First Piano Concerto and Schumann’s First Symphony. “Predictable, unadventurous, playing it safe,” Blaise Zabini had been heard to grumble, upon which several people who chose to remain anonymous—and who were definitely not named Ginny Weasley, Padma Patil, or Aaron Goldstein, among others—had pointed out that anyone who considered a concerto with Professor Snape as soloist “playing it safe” needed their head examining. (Neville Longbottom had initially received the news with open-mouthed horror: Blaise caught his drift and corrected him. “Not the Second Concerto, Longbottom, the First, the one _without_ the cello solo, you’re not being asked to play a duet with the professor, set your mind at ease.” As Neville grinned sheepishly, Blaise went on “I mean, which do _you_ think Professor Snape would choose?” He flicked his wand in an ariel spell, giving them the serene grace of the Second Concerto followed immediately by the jagged, uncompromising opening statement of the First, and everyone laughed.)

They began with the Mephisto Waltz and its irresistible energy. “Oh my God, that cello line,” Hermione said, in spite of herself, as they packed up after rehearsal. “No wonder it’s called Mephisto. Neville, that whole thing should be…I don’t know…barred to the under-eighteens.”

Neville went pink. “Um, it’s really not very difficult.”

“Who said it was? It’s…I mean, even when you lot haven’t actually quite got the timing right, which some of you haven’t yet…just, oh my.” It was not that Hermione had never listened to rock or pop, whether wizarding or Muggle, and not that she couldn’t see the point of them either. But she couldn’t think of any hip-thrusting, hoarse-crooning song she’d ever heard that was, well, _sexier_ than that bold, straightforward, rough-hewn, jaunty cello introduction to the Mephisto Waltz.

Two rows over in the woodwind section, Draco jerked when someone tapped him on the shoulder. “What,” he bit off.

Millie Bulstrode blinked calmly down at him. “Stop staring at Granger and Nev as if they were about to run off to Gretna Green, Malfoy.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” but it came out limp and awkward, not a crisp protest. “…wait, _Nev_? Since when did you and Longbottom…”

Millie never blushed, but Draco was standing close enough to see the infinitesimal lifting of her chin that she used when another girl would have gone pink. “Have you room to talk about Gryffindors?”

“I wasn’t…oh never mind.” What you need, Hermione had said to him some time back, compulsively unable to stop giving advice as she was, is to learn to cut your losses and stop wasting time and emotional energy on things you don’t actually care about very much. “Anyway, what are you talking about, Gretna Green,” he muttered, and devoted his attention to caring for his reeds.

 

Neville and Millie, in unspoken agreement, took their time after orchestra practice that day, noodling away at their respective bass clefs and waiting for the rest of the orchestra to disperse. When they had, and he had finished putting the cello away and tucked the case into its rack, Millie was standing by the door to one of the practice rooms, in a listening pose. She beckoned him over silently, with a wave of the hand—her gestures were always big and lush like the rest of her and he was embarrassed by how much that… _okay_ , turned him on, but not just that, gave him a sense of excitement and safety at the same time…

“What?” he said quietly, arriving beside her.

Millie silenced him with a finger to the lips—his, not hers, which almost made him stumble into the doorjamb. Blushing, he found his balance at the last second, with the help of a hand on her shoulder. She grinned at him (he was aware of grinning back, idiotically, irresistibly) and gestured toward the door, one hand cupped at her ear.

Neville set himself to listen. Something Baroque—Bach or near offer—for oboe and violin, winding amiably about one another in a maze of trills and sixteenth notes. Malfoy and Hermione. He let the music soak into him, thinking absently that while Hermione’s crisp-edged, precise, exuberant violin reflected her personality precisely, it was a musical mystery where the gentle mellow oboe tone came from in Draco Malfoy.

The movement came to an end with a nicely judged ritardando, and a half-heard conversation began. “…such a waste,” they heard Malfoy say after a moment. “Any wizarding orchestra would be glad…”

Hermione’s response was full of accidentals, all sharps, the way she got when on edge. “Draco, I can play the violin while I’m at university, and even go back to audition later if I decide it’s what I want. I can’t study while playing full-time in an orchestra. How many times need we have this argument?” She drew breath. “And if you decide it’s what you want, _no one can stop you from auditioning_ , not your family, not me, not Professor Snape. Stop projecting on me.”

“What makes you think…doing any such…” Malfoy’s voice was much softer than hers suddenly, only snatches audible, and Neville felt guilty about straining to hear. “Maybe I just…play in an orchestra where you’re not…”

There was a silence, during which Neville and Millie stood carefully still and did not meet one another’s eyes, and then Malfoy said more clearly, sounding a little out of breath, “You know, the _carpe diem_ spell was condemned two hundred years ago as no more than a magical placebo, but to hell with that. Let’s do the second movement.”

“Let’s,” Hermione said, her voice softer now. They heard her murmur an entering count, and then Malfoy’s oboe began a sweet languid melody, low for the oboe and quivering with depth, answered after a few bars by the violin’s sharper-edged plaint. For a little while Neville and Millie stood there listening still; then the music’s intimacy grew too great, and by silent consent they moved away. Millie took his hand—hers was as large as his own, and very warm—and led him out of the rehearsal room.

“The greenhouses?” Neville asked, as they descended the winding stairs.

Millie shook her head. “With all the plants there? The ones we’ve been tending all year? I’d feel as if a whole crowd of aunts and uncles were looking on and cheering.”

Neville choked. “Um…you may have a point…I haven’t any aunts or uncles,” he added absently. “Actual ones, I mean, not plants. I mean…”.

Millie tickled his wrist with a thumb. “I haven’t either. Well, maybe on my mother’s side, I wouldn’t know. Anyway, that’s not where we’re going.”

“Please not the dungeons. I don’t think the other Slytherins would approve of me, and Professor Snape…”

“ _No_ , not the dungeons, what do you think I am. That’s not what the dormitories are for. I know a place…”

She did. The little room was so dusty it took half a dozen cleaning spells before either of them could stop sneezing, but the curtains were a comforting rich green, edged with yellow that hinted at a fictitious sunny day outside, and between them it was easy to transfigure the businesslike table and chairs into a soft-cushioned couch.

Neville was too shy to make it an actual bed. He had not slept with a girl before, although he and Rebecca Park, the sweet-faced Ravenclaw who had preceded him as cello first chair, had gone somewhat beyond just hand-holding back in fifth year. The little he and Millie had done so far had gone a ways to convince him that the rumors about her, while probably off the mark in terms of the exact names and numbers of boys she had been to bed with, were not entirely baseless either.

He apologized, stammeringly, for his inexperience, and she asked him what made him think she wasn’t enjoying the chance to teach him a few things.

“Most boys around here take the position that any girl with more experience than they have must be a slag,” she said darkly, moving away a little. Neville blinked, watching the light shift in her eyes.

“That seems…like a sort of subjective judgment criterion,” he said cautiously. “I’m not…it’s not your fault I haven’t…”

Millie took his chin in her hand, rubbing lightly with one thumb. “You don’t do things casually, do you, Neville Longbottom.”

Neville raised his chin lightly from her hand. “No. No, I don’t.” He wasn’t much good at most things, except Herbology and the cello, but he took everything seriously. “But you do?”

“I have, sure.” Millie sighed. “Why not? Someone who wants to go to bed with me because he likes my big jugs, he doesn’t want to be taken seriously, and I sure as hell don’t want to take him that way either.” She looked at him hard, her brown eyes shifting almost to black.

“I like your…I…I mean…” Neville swallowed. “I want to take your… _all_ of you very seriously. Not just the parts I can hold in my hands.”

“Well. Good. Good.” She moved against him, suiting action to words. “We’ve not got much time at Hogwarts left, you know. Next year, depending on where we end up, you might find me a bit far away to hold.”

Neville kissed the warm soft skin in the dip of her throat. “I’m a gardener, Millie. I’ve a lot of practice at waiting to see what blooms.”

 

IV. Bach Concerto for Violin and Oboe 


When the Aurors came to talk to the seventh-years about possible careers, one of them was a slim, whippy young woman with shocking-pink hair that made Professor McGonagall’s eyebrows ascend to her own hairline; Draco caught Snape covering his eyes with one palm and had to bite the corners of his mouth not to snicker. All amusement fell away, though, when he recognized the elegant straight lines of her nose and forehead under the dazzle of pink, and knew even before he heard her name (“Sergeant Tonks. First name’s Adore, and if you think that’s bad you should hear what it’s short for”) who she was.

There was quite a little crowd around her after the talk; she was the youngest of the Aurors who had come that day, and by far the most distinctive-looking, and if his heart hadn’t been pounding so it would have been funny to watch people like Zach Smith and Lisa Turpin, not exactly Auror material, practically queuing up for her autograph. Draco made himself wait patiently until the crowd had faded away.

“Um. Adore.” It felt ridiculous on his lips, but “Sergeant Tonks” seemed even stranger.

“Mm? Something else I can— _oh_.” A half-grin seemed to be her standard expression, but now it fell off her face to leave a hard look that made her look like his idea of an Auror for the first time. “You’re my horrible aunt’s brat, aren’t you. My little horrible aunt, I mean, not Mum’s horrible twin. You’re the Malfoy kid. I don’t remember your first name. If I ever heard it.”

“Draco,” he said, automatically, and then recovered some backbone. “I think I should be the one saying you’re _my_ horrible aunt’s brat.”

Adore Tonks raised her eyebrows. “If you’ve come to tell me all about what a shame and a dishonor it is to have a halfblood in the family, you’re wasting your breath.”

“No. I mean—that’s not what I wanted to say to you. I need to…look…could you let me know how to get in touch with my aunt? Your mother?”

“My _mum_? You want to talk to her? What for?”

“That’s my business,” he said aloofly. “If it puts your mind at ease, I’m not planning to accuse her of betraying her race.”

“Well…but look…why not just ask your mum? No, all right, I guess not.” She frowned at him, grey eyes cold. “Tell you what. My family doesn’t owe yours a damn thing, so you’d better remember this is a favor I’m doing you, because I feel like it—I will _ask_ my mum. If she says it’s all right, I’ll owl you at Hogwarts with her address. If you don’t hear from me, assume she said no and take it as your family’s just desserts.”

Draco was enough of a Slytherin to know when not to push. “Done and done,” he said, with as much of a flourish as he could muster, gave her a half bow, and stalked away as if he were taller.

 

The flat with “Tonks” on the card was perhaps a bit shabby, with loose threads on the curtains and wear visible on the carpets, but clean and bright. Draco had been a bit nervous that he would be faced with the accusing-eyed Adore as well, not to speak of her father—about whom, other than his blood, he knew nothing at all—but only his aunt was there.

She really did look like his aunt Bella; by accident (surely not design), they wore the same hairstyle, the heavy dark hair pinned up in an Edwardian bun that set off the clear Black family bone structure. Bella, though, kept her hair as black as her name (which, likewise, she’d kept through two marriages and scandalous divorces) while Andromeda’s showed gleams like veins of silver ore through its length.

“Aunt Andromeda,” he greeted her stiffly, offering the box of chocolates he’d brought from Zaubermann’s on the Alley.

“Draco,” she replied coolly, a deeper voice than his mother’s or Bella’s, but with the same cut-glass accent. “Thank you, that was kind. Ted will be thrilled. He loves these, but we can’t afford them very often.”

“Er—“ Draco picked up the conversational gauntlet. “I don’t actually know what he does…?”

“He’s an artisan with furniture—makes and repairs it, with wizarding and Muggle techniques both.” She stroked the table where she’d set the chocolates down, drawing Draco’s eye to the softly gleaming wood. “I do some announcing on the WWN from time to time—you may even have heard my voice on the wireless if you’re up at odd hours—and we get by. Won’t you have a seat?”

“Thank you.” There were two mugs set out on the table—not the delicate teacups that his mother would have offered—and he watched, hands clenched together on his knees, as she poured from the teapot.

“What can I do for you? I take it Cissy and Malfoy don’t know you’re here.”

_Cissy and Malfoy_ , Draco repeated to himself, trying to recognize his Mother and Father. “I wanted—um—your advice on something. Actually.”

“Yes?”

“There’s—“ Draco cleared his throat. Deliberately, testing the waters, he said “There’s this Mudblood girl at school.”

Andromeda under-reacted, he reflected; where his mother or, God knew, Aunt Bella would have been vocally, vividly expressive whenever moved to be so, his Aunt Andromeda’s eyebrows simply drew delicately together at the taboo word; and went up a little when he continued, “She’s my girlfriend.” Perhaps it was a learned manner, counter to Bella’s histrionics.

“I see,” she murmured, and sipped her tea.

“You’re the family expert,” he went on boldly. “I thought I would apply to you for…a parallax view.”

Andromeda set her teacup down without a sound and reached for the box of chocolates he had brought, taking her time over undoing the gold ribbon—he had never seen it done by hand, rather than with a _decatenare_ spell, before—and deliberating over the selection. Draco jammed his hands between his knees and waited for her, keeping his breathing carefully steady.

“Is this a bit of a seventh-year fling, then? Or are you planning to bring her home and introduce her to your parents?”

“We started seeing each other in sixth year,” he said, idiotically pedantic to buy time. “It’s not…I mean…I’m not just…disporting myself with her. She’s…” He stuck on describing Hermione, unable to choose what to focus on first: her singing violin, her insatiable intelligence (both her academic brilliance and her bloody smart mouth), her deep brown eyes widening just slightly in delight when he’d said something she liked, her electric corona of hair, her… . Draco shook his head and recalled where he was. “She wants to go to university, and then…well, I’m about one hundred percent sure she’s got no interest in becoming the lady of Malfoy Manor some day. She does things on her own terms.”

Andromeda slipped a dark chocolate into her mouth, topped with a delicate crystallized violet, and offered him the box. “And what do you think she wants from you?”

“What could she possibly see in me, you mean?” Draco jibed, a little shakily. “Your guess is as good as mine, Aunt Andromeda—“

“—Andri.”

“I’m sorry?” Reflexively, he helped himself to a chocolate, without really looking.

“No one’s called me Andromeda since I was about your age. It is a bit of a mouthful, don’t you think? Aunt Andri, if you must.”

“Oh. All right.” Milk chocolate over marzipan, he discovered. “There isn’t really any good shortening for Draco.”

“No, there isn’t, is there? What’s your middle name again?”

“Aurelius,” he said reluctantly. “It’s a Malfoy family name.”

“That’s quite nice.”

“Aunt Andri, pardon me, you are the one who named your daughter _Nymphadora_ , aren’t you? I don’t think your judgment on this subject is quite sound!” Draco bit his tongue and tried not to giggle out of idiot nerves, but to his relief Andromeda was grinning.

“That was Ted,” she said defensively. “He loves wizarding names, says you would too if you’d grown up as Ted Tonks. Adore’s never forgiven him for it. Anyway, if we take it that your young woman hasn’t fallen for you simply because she’s always wanted to date a Draco Aurelius…?”

Draco saw that she really was smiling at him; that somehow this ridiculous discussion of names had brought him back from the place beyond her pale where he had been born, by virtue of being “Cissy and Malfoy”’s son.

“The only thing that she might…that she might love me for…,” feeling his face heat, “well, maybe hearing me play the oboe. That’s the only thing I…”

“You’ll have to bring it with you when you visit again,” she said. “Let me hear you and find out if this Muggleborn friend of yours knows what she’s about.”

Draco straightened his back. “May I…May I bring her, too?”

Andromeda sipped her tea and smiled at him over the rim of the cup. “Yes, Draco Aurelius, you may.”

 

V. Baiser de la fee 


Harry happened to be the first Gryffindor to have a careers interview scheduled with his Head of House, meaning that no one could tell him what to expect; he approached Professor McGonagall’s office hoping it wouldn’t take too long.

“Professor? It’s me, Harry Potter. I’m here for my interview.”

“We know, Potter,” said Professor Snape, who for some reason was looming over Professor McGonagall’s desk along with its proper occupant. “You plan to take the Quidditch world by storm as soon as you leave Hogwarts. You have no backup plan and you will need no backup plan. Does that cover the situation?”

Harry decided he deserved considerable praise, even though no one was likely to provide it, for stopping to try and think of a more polite way of saying “Why is Professor Snape even here, he’s not my Head of House and I’m not even taking Potions this year.”

Fortunately, he was still thinking when Professor McGonagall said it for him. “Thank you, Severus, I think Mr. Potter and I are capable of conducting a careers counseling interview on our own. Perhaps you have some seventh-year Slytherins to advise, or else a Brahms concerto to practice?”

“I take your point, Minerva,” Snape said, smooth and snide. “You need not press it.” He swept past Harry with elegant disdain (the old bat) and turned at the door to say “Minerva, I will await you in the practice room.” The door closed behind him.

Was Professor McGonagall _blushing_? Harry decided firmly that it was just a reflection from her red tartan. “Sorry to interrupt your meeting?” he offered.

“Not at all,” she said firmly. “Sit down, Mr. Potter. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Um, no, thanks.” Earlier in the common room, Ron had tentatively offered a selection from his mum’s latest parcel, and Harry’s mouth was still pleasantly filled with the memory of raisin buns.

“Let us waste no more time, then. Am I right in thinking that Severus’ phrasing may have been rebarbative but its gist generally correct?”

Harry blinked hard, got that one, and squared his shoulders. “I do want to play Quidditch. Wood…you remember Oliver Wood, Professor…he came down to watch our practices last month and said there were no guarantees but he thought I’d got a good chance with one of the professional teams. The tryouts begin in April, so I’ve got the winter to do, like, strength conditioning and that.”

“It’s certainly not a completely unreasonable ambition,” Professor McGonagall allowed. “I’ve had certain students in the past who have never played even for a House team, and who announce that they expect to walk into a starting position in professional Quidditch the day they leave Hogwarts…well.” She tucked a stray strand of hair back into her bun. “I will need you to think of two or three alternative career paths, however. Professional sport is a highly unpredictable option; you might not, in fact, find a position with any of the teams. Or you might be injured early on. Or any number of other possibilities. What else have you in mind?”

Harry had actually talked about this with Ron, as well as with some of the Gryffindor Quidditch team facing the same questions this year or next—Dean Thomas, Ron’s sister Ginny, Win Sobel. “Well, there are broom manufacturers. My marks in Charms aren’t bad and I’m quite good with my hands. Or there are, like, I’ve forgotten what they’re called…these people who keep the players in good shape? Not doctors, I mean mediwizards, but…like, with massage spells and muscle training and all that?”

Professor McGonagall looked annoyed, but apparently only because she couldn’t remember what they were called either. “Two very reasonable alternatives, Mr. Potter. Very good. Have you spoken with your guardians about these options, by the way?”

“A bit? They don’t really know about Quidditch, but they quite like sport. My aunt…” Harry swallowed. “My aunt isn’t all that keen on me flying for a living, on account of that’s how my mum and dad died, but she won’t outright forbid me to do it. And people mostly don’t die playing Quidditch.”

Professor McGonagall sighed. “Even among the test flyers, your father had a reputation as a daredevil; his death and your mother’s were a grief to very many of us but not all that much of a surprise. I hope you will be more levelheaded.”

Harry looked down.

“I also advise you to cultivate interests outside of Quidditch,” she added. “It’s rather a pity you have never shown an interest in music, given your mother’s musical pursuits while in school.”

“I thought…my mum didn’t like music. Aunt Pet…my aunt never said anything.”

“I don’t think Lily studied music at home—many of the Muggleborn students do not, especially those from modest circumstances. She took up the viola after coming to Hogwarts, and did very well at it, I believe.”

_Mum did music. What’s a viola?_ Harry wondered. _Like a violin?_

“Your father, on the other hand, was tone-deaf—you know the word? Yes. Except when your mother was performing, he invariably preferred the Quidditch pitch to the rehearsal room.” McGonagall’s look was wry. “I assumed you had inherited the first quality as well as the second—but—Let us make a test. Sing something, Mr. Potter.”

“ _Sing_ something?”

“Anything will do. The school song…no, perhaps not that. Any song you are familiar with.”

Rattled, Harry’s mind produced only an old American pop tune he’d heard on Dudley’s transistor last holidays. _Well, it’s not like McGonagall would know it…_ He cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and belted out, “Am I only dreaming? Or is this feeling an eternal flame?”

His voice cracked on the high note, and he shut his mouth in a hurry and cleared his throat again, hard.

McGonagall was wearing the most peculiar expression, as if…yes, she was definitely trying not to crack a smile, damn it. Who would have thought she’d… “Not bad at all, Mr. Potter, if not quite up to the original performance. You have an ear.”

“Um, I have two?”

Professor McGonagall let out a small, unprofessorly giggle. “Very well, Mr. Potter, then go and make the most of them. Listen to some music. Sing something. And report back to me in the spring on which Quidditch teams you have in mind to try out for.”

“Yes, Professor,” Harry promised, and made his escape, wondering if he was as red in the face as he felt, and if Ron was still in the common room.

After what Granger had said to him—after the stomach-knotting nerves of telling Dudley—it had been astonishing to discover, from the general indifference of his wizard-born classmates, that people actually didn’t _care_. If he happened to want to, he could _tell_ people and not have to keep shoving it down into himself, like rubbish into that cupboard under the stairs even houseproud Aunt Pet had never gotten around to cleaning. He wouldn’t have to keep looking away from the places his gaze naturally drifted to, keep choosing a girl, the nearest girl in sight, to focus on—Leanne Almetson’s heavy blond hair, Millie Bulstrode’s forty-four bust, Parvati Patel’s eyeshadow, even Granger’s neat round behind. All pretty, beautiful even, and none of them what he wanted to be looking at.

Longbottom’s broad shoulders. Draco Malfoy’s cut-crystal bone structure. Ian Calley’s whole body flexing into a Quaffle throw across the pitch. Ron Weasley’s thick fiery hair.

What would it be like to _let_ himself watch?

He tried it. He found Ron watching him back. They went from there.

“Wizards are—well, okay with it, then?” Harry asked, still skittish, in a private moment.

Ron scratched his nose thoughtfully. “’S a bit more complicated than that, I guess. It sort of depends on who you are—what you are? I mean, look at—oh, Malfoy.” He grinned as Harry made a retching noise. “Come on, he’s not that bad, not since he decided he’d like to get into Hermione’s knickers, anyway. Thing is, he’s bloody lucky it is Hermione he’s after and not, y’know, me or you, because he’s really got to be, like, straight. He’s the only son of a Noble House, and that means he’s got a big responsibility to carry on the line—marry and have sprogs.”  
“Horrible little baby Malfoys,” Harry muttered.

Ron snickered. “Yeah, like that. Same thing for Nev, or Zach Smith from Hufflepuff.”

“ _Smith_ is a Noble House? I thought it was, like, the commonest name in England.”

“Well, sure, but his branch is noble, what are you going to do?”

Harry tried and failed to picture Zacharias Smith as a baby baronet. “But you don’t have to do that?” he changed the subject.

“Me? Not the same thing at all. For one thing I’ve got five brothers, heaven help us—someone in there is bound to continue the Weasley line, one way or another. My oldest brother’s already engaged. And we’re peasants anyway. My nan and gramp, well, they didn’t even go to Hogwarts.” His color had risen slightly behind the freckles. “Sixth son of a plebe family? If I sleep with—well, whoever I sleep with, they’ll just figure it’s a step up from goats.”

“Best compliment I’ve had all week,” Harry said, mostly to make the tension around Ron’s eyes go away, and succeeded better than he had expected to. After a short nonverbal interlude, Ron went on, sounding more confident, “But you, now. You’re another story.”

“Me. Me?”

“Yeah. You’re an only son, and the Potters were an important family back in your dad’s time—but then again they weren’t a Noble House ever. More, what’s the word, nouveau riche.” In Ron’s idiolect the words rhymed with “who knew which,” but they made more sense to Harry that way anyway. “And then you’re a half-blood. So it’s a bit hard to say where you come in.”

Harry said hesitantly, “I wrote to my aunt about Mum and Dad. When you…when we, at Hogsmeade…” They both winced. On what should have been a pleasant and carefree Hogsmeade Saturday, Ron had felt called upon to remind Harry, with accuracy and maximum tactlessness, that he might have all the Galleons he could wish for but not everyone was so fortunate, and they had ended up returning to the castle separately and in separate states of outward high dudgeon and inward misery. It had been a week before they spoke again, and almost two weeks after that before matters returned to the status quo.

“Anyway,” Harry resumed, fumbling in his schoolbag, “Mum and my aunt hadn’t got much money when they were growing up. My granddad—I don’t remember him, he died when I was a baby—he was on disability and they didn’t have that much to begin with. So I wondered…I thought…” He found the envelope he was looking for, brushed Chocolate Frog crumbs and stray quill feathers off it, and extracted its contents. “This is what my aunt wrote. ‘James was a nice bloke,’” he recited carefully, “’but he never really understood Muggles or poor people either one—he had this idea somewhere that we were _choosing_ to live without magic, or without much money, and really we could live the same way he did if we wanted to, because everyone could. He never figured out that not everybody has the same choices.’” Harry cleared his throat, embarrassed. “I know that’s a bit naff…my aunt doesn’t usually talk like that…”

Ron stretched his legs out thoughtfully, letting them overlap a little more with Harry’s. “Back this fall, just a bit after we started school? My brother got beat up in London. I don’t think you would’ve heard…it was before we started properly talking…”  
“Fred or George?” Harry wasn’t sure why, or whether, the subject was being changed, but he went along.

“Neither,” Ron said, surprised. “Percy. You remember—“

“Oh, sorry. Yes, I guess.” He remembered Percy Weasley vaguely as a persnickety prefect, not particularly interesting since, unlike the twins, he didn’t play Quidditch. Fred and George had made fun of him regularly, in and out of his presence, but refused to put up with others doing the same. “Was he, um, okay?”

“Yeah, apparently, at least he hasn’t said different. He owls Mum once in a while and she passes his letters on to me and Gin, same as with Bill and Charlie. The thing is, somehow—I don’t know, don’t ask me—it got him all involved in this education project and now he’s finding out about all these people—I mean wizards and witches—who didn’t go to Hogwarts? Like my gran and gramp. Like you said—not everybody has the same choices…”

“I was happy to get my Hogwarts letter,” Harry remembered. “My mum and dad went here, and _magic_. But I’d have probably liked going to the comprehensive with my cousin and playing football, too.”

Ron put a hand tentatively on Harry’s thigh. “Glad you didn’t, though. At least, I am now.”

“Me too,” Harry said, and covered Ron’s hand with his. “We’ve got all the choices we can handle, right?”

“At least.”

 

VI. Brahms Piano Concerto No.1 


“Nervous?” Minerva inquired briskly, closing the door of the Green Room behind her.

Severus gave her a look of calculated disdain. “Hardly.” He was in the concert suit that rarely saw the light of day, impatiently adjusting his cravat and flicking at his cuffs. “It’s only a student performance, after all.”

Minerva reached over and twitched his cravat into shape, getting a bolting look for her trouble. “I’m surprised you agreed to play. You haven’t done a concerto in how long?”

“One doesn’t pass up an opportunity to play Brahms, even with a crowd of idiot teenagers. Anyway, pressure was put on me, as with so much else around here.”

“By? Surely you are capable of standing up to the worst young Mr. Zabini can muster.”

That got her yet another scorching glance. “Conductors, let alone those in the form of children from my own House, hold no terrors for me. Old friends, if you must know.”

Minerva considered. “The Malfoys,” she deduced. Severus sighed, but did not contradict her. “You and Narcissa Black were close, I remember.”

“She will be in attendance to hear Draco’s final concert at Hogwarts, of course. Even Lucius may trouble to come if he has no particularly enthralling previous engagement.” Severus poured himself a glass of water from the little crystal pitcher on the table and passed it absently from hand to hand.

“I see that your careers counseling session with the younger Mr. Malfoy went ever so well,” Minerva sighed. “He’s a fine oboist, of course. Lucius would never have made more than a comprimario tenor. Perhaps the Malfoys of the past have never become professional musicians because, unlike the current generation, they simply weren’t good enough?”

Severus, who had just taken a mouthful of water, choked; Minerva took the glass away from him until he stopped coughing and glared, damp-eyed, at her. “I _beg_ you will not repeat that to Lucius himself. For Draco’s sake if none other.”

“I wish you would have a little more faith in my powers of diplomacy. I’m not Professor Dumbledore, after all.”

“Thank God for that,” Severus muttered. Minerva caught his wrist before he could wipe his mouth on his cravat.

“They’re beginning the overture,” she said, hearing the faint applause from the room which Hogwarts could, when necessary, expand into an elegant, vaguely Art Deco auditorium. “Shall we watch?”

He sipped water, keeping a weather eye on her, and said precisely “ _Monitorio_ ,” making a sharply geometric gesture with his free hand. The Green Room wall snapped clear and then showed the stage of the auditorium, where the orchestra had taken their seats, seventy strong, the girls all in black and the boys in dark suits with ties in House colors. Blaise Zabini, flamboyant in a tailcoat and green-and-silver cummerbund, was just mounting the podium.

“Who’s the harpist?” Minerva asked absently, releasing his wrist. “I didn’t think we had one in the school just now.”

“You don’t know? A French girl who married one of your Weasleys, I forget which. Someone brought her up from London for the event.”

“Handy,” Minerva approved. “I did hear something about that, yes. Bill, I think, not Charlie.”

Severus shrugged, uninterested, and focused on the view of the orchestra as Zabini’s baton went up.

They watched, breathing in the music. As the opening cello theme moved into the full orchestra, Severus murmured, “All right, perhaps I can see a little of whatever Miss Bulstrode sees in that idiot Longbottom.”

“His depths are not hidden, Severus. Most people just don’t look.” Minerva sighed. “I’m a little alarmed by the rate at which the seventh-years have been pairing off. Miss Granger consulted me about young Malfoy, you know.”

Severus looked sharply at her. “To what effect?”

Minerva tilted her head, momentarily taking on a hint of Hermione Granger’s appearance. “’I’m going to miss him terribly next year, but what if I don’t miss him enough? Do wizards and witches usually marry straight out of Hogwarts?’” she quoted.

“I didn’t realize that you considered your duties as Head of House to include functioning as an agony aunt,” Severus muttered, returning his attention to the performance, where Pansy Parkinson’s piccolo was in the process of flirting shamelessly with the entire orchestra. “What did you tell her?”

“It’s all choices,” Minerva said, half quoting herself, her speaking voice more inflected than usual with the rich tones of her singing voice. “Nobody is going to grant them a happy ending—whatever that may be—free of charge and straight off the mark, but nobody is denying it to them—any of them—either. They must, they may, choose as they go along and keep choosing.”

On stage, Neville Longbottom’s gentle, flexible cello solo was accepted and echoed by Hermione’s sweet and plangent violin; the solo passed on through the woodwinds to Parvati Patil’s plaintive clarinet, and was swept up into the air by the rush of the harp. Then the entire orchestra crashed in again and the piece ended with dramatic flair.

“As must we,” Severus said finally, rising to his feet. “Nos morituri te salutamus, Minerva. I have a concerto to play.”

“ _In bocca al lupo_ ,” she told him, a charm against stage fright, not that he was likely to need it. “I’ll go into the hall to watch.”

“You need not.”

“I choose to,” she countered, and watched him sweep out, not quite smiling.

She entered the hall quietly by a side door, and found an empty seat at one side, next to—of all people—Harry Potter from Gryffindor, who blushed for some reason when she sat down beside him but nodded politely.

They could hardly have chosen a better concerto for Severus Snape, Minerva mused, as the fiercely aggressive opening of the first movement rattled the air in the auditorium. The piano came in with precise authority. Regardless of “only a student performance,” “a crowd of idiot teenagers,” he was putting his back into it, and Blaise and his cohorts were living up to him.

The silence between the first and second movements was not, very; it murmured with reactions at seeing the formidable Professor Snape in this guise, from entertainment to awe. The audience fell silent again, soothed, as the slow movement began.

No, Minerva reflected a few minutes later, “soothed” was not the word; the heart of the slow movement, that long-drawn-out movement of chords over a deep, constantly renewed pedal point, was not simply “soothing.” It spoke of resolution, resilience, resonance, with pain in full measure accepted rather than overcome, of faith—

She tried to wipe her eyes unobtrusively, and was reassured by hearing other small sniffs here and there around her. On stage, the orchestra had once again taken over from the piano; Severus sat straight-backed and calm, at the eye of the storm. Hermione Granger’s face gleamed with tear tracks where the stage lights hit it, but her fingers were steady on the violin, and the others did not fail her.

They’ll manage after they leave here, Minerva thought, momentarily transported far beyond the one million quotidian details and worries of her everyday life. We will too.

 


End file.
